


Like Shooting Flowers

by Skinandpit



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 16:33:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4312362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skinandpit/pseuds/Skinandpit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU where everyone lives to old age and then they don't live anymore. Concerning Joly (who is still around) and Grantaire's daughter. </p><p>  <i>Joly eats his chocolate bar sitting on the couch. The kitchen table is well within his line of sight, three chairs and no one in them, there’s silver dust on the seats. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Shooting Flowers

Joly is planting flowers in the garden when the shadow falls across him. It is a long shadow, and a cold one, startling in the summer heat.

“Hello,” he says, without turning around. A second later, Grantaire’s daughter drops down beside him, spy as anything — she’s only fifty, and he can’t help but be a little jealous of her joints. 

Iris is not a pretty girl. Maybe that isn’t nice to say, but it’s true. She’s as ugly as her father, with her uneven features and her hair that always sticks out at odd angles no matter how she cuts it. She looks nice, though. Not that it matters. But she does. She wears heavy patchwork skirts and dangly wooden earrings and a lot of purple and has a big lopsided smile. 

She’s the only one of Grantaire’s kids who visits him, which is wonderfully kind of her. She’s hardly obliged to. He’s glad she does. He and Musichetta and Bossuet never had any kids, which he doesn’t regret, but it does get a little lonely sometimes, with no one obliged to visit him. 

She smiles at him. “How are you doing, Uncle Joly?” 

“Oh, I’m just fine,” he tells her, which isn’t really true, but he smiles anyway and the lie feels okay. 

“I was just nearby,” she says, “and I thought I’d drop by.” He knows this isn’t true, either, because he lives in the middle of nowhere where there isn’t anything for her to visit. 

She waves towards the flats of plants beside him. There are too many. Flats and flats all around, and more in the wheelbarrow, more than he could possibly use. All in bright colours. He’s at that age where people are starting to worry when he does unusual things, but Iris doesn’t say anything. Maybe she understands. They were so bright in the store, and he panicked looking at them, afraid they’d die alone in there, afraid of walking away and never seeing their petals again. 

“Have you got a pattern?” Iris asks. He shakes his head, and she drags the flat with the yellow pansies towards herself, digs a hole in the ground with her fingers, and puts a flower in.

“There are extra gloves in the garage,” he tells her. She smiles again. 

“Thanks,” she says, with dirt on her fingers and under her nails, “But I’m okay.” 

#

Iris is fifty-two years old. She has two children, teenagers, who she trusts enough to let them stay home alone. She is washing her hands in the house of her father’s friend and the dirt is swirling into his drain, muddying the water. She is watching this dirt. She is breathing in steady breaths. 

It has been two months since her father died. 

Her father was not an easy man to love. It was better when she got older, when she left his house and no longer needed to rely on him. Uncle Joly used to come to her childhood home to drink with her father and once she hated him for it, but she doesn’t anymore.

Uncle Joly is sweet, and a little scattered, and he talks about her father like the grief belongs to her alone. She doesn’t know if she likes that or not. 

He’s coming into the room now, leaning heavily on his came. “Hello,” he says. “Oh, Iris, let me make you something to eat.” 

His house feels cavernous, all these walls, and the silence inside them. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’m alright. I need to make dinner for the kids, anyway.” 

He’s already opening up all of his drawers. “Here,” he says, and pulls out a silver cookie tin. He opens it up and puts it on the counter. It’s full of different kinds of chocolate bars tumbled together into a dull rainbow. “Take some for the kids. And for yourself.” He smiles, then winks at her, and pulls out a Kit-Kat. “And I’ll take one for myself, too.” 

“Okay,” Iris picks three and drops them into her purse. “But Uncle Joly, really, it’s okay.” 

He waves his hand. “I don’t like you leaving with nothing.” Then he pauses, bites at the inside of her lip, and looks up at her. He’s a very small man, hunching in his age, and she’s a very tall woman. “I have a favour to ask, but I don’t want you to think I’m trying to bribe you.” 

“No, what is it?” 

“If you’ve got time. I know you might not have time. You’re so busy, with your kids and with your work.” He’s twisting his hands over the handle of his cane. 

“Uncle Joly, tell me, and I’ll see if I can work something out.” 

“I need a drive, that’s all. This week. Saturday. It’s not, it’s not —“ His voice stumbles. “It’s not essential.” 

She runs through the list in her head. Groceries. Soccer practise, for Evan. A hair appointment, for herself. But already she’s shuffling her life inside her head, she’ll find a way, she’ll make time, she’ll call the neighbours and her babysitter and she doesn’t know why, really, her that her loyalty to this man runs so deep, but it does. “Saturday should be fine, Joly. What do you need me to drive you to?”

“A visitation,” he says. So steady. His voice doesn’t shake.

“Oh.” Then, “Whose?” 

“Enjolras,” he says. “You’ve met him. He, well. He lived a good life.” 

#

When she’s gone the house is so empty. He eats his chocolate bar sitting on the couch. The kitchen table is well within his line of sight, three chairs and no one in them, there’s silver dust on the seats.

Before he finishes, he breaks off three pieces from his chocolate bar, then hauls himself to his feet. In his bedroom, there is a small shrine with two photographs in it. He puts the pieces of chocolate in the bowl, then lights a stick of incense with the matches he keeps by his bedside table and then shuts his eyes. 

He keeps meaning to make a new one for the others. The last time he’d been to visit Enjolras, Enjolras had asked where Combeferre was and Joly needed to explain it to him. Why don’t you just let him think — a nurse had asked him later, but his friend was a person, not an inconvenience that needed lying to, he wouldn’t have wanted that. 

There were so many flowers on the bedside table and the windowsill that the hospital room looked like some kind of fragile jungle and they were all from Joly, who didn’t know what else to do. He smiled a lot. They played checkers. At once point Enjolras had grabbed his arm, confusedly, and started talking rapidly about the calls they had to make and the people they had to get organized and once Joly had figured out what he was talking about he took his hand and said Enjolras, Enjolras, it’s okay, we did it, it’s already done, it’s been legalized already and do you remember Grantaire’s daughter got married in the spring and this expression of perfect calm had passed across Enjolras’s face. 

He’d lived a good life. They all had. Joly presses his knuckles to his lips, hard, then stands up again. He’s going to make turkey sandwiches for dinner. That’s very important. You needed to keep cooking for yourself. It’s when you stop that things start to go sideways. He’s not going to eat it at the table, though. Maybe some other day. He should dust the chairs. 

#

In her house on Saturday Iris is making bacon and eggs and toast for Evan and Gina. Evan is sixteen and grumpy about everything and Gina is nineteen, just about ready to go off to university.

“Gina,” she says, “do you think you could drive Evan to soccer practise tomorrow?” Last night lying in bed it occurred to her that if her children work together, they could be self-sufficient. 

“I can drive myself,” Evan says.

“No, honey, you can’t,” says Iris. Then, because she can see him starting to rise up in his seat, “It has nothing to do with competency. It’s your license. It’s the law.” 

“He can drive while I sit beside him,” Gina says, which Iris doesn’t particurally like better — it is a little about competence — but Evan’s eyes light up and she can’t think of any decent counterargument, so, okay, that becomes the plan and it’s probably a bonding moment for both of them, so that’s nice. She puts eggs and bacon on their plate and hovers a little bit while they pluck at it, without thanking her. 

“Where are you going, mom?” Gina asks, and Evan goes, “Oh, yeah.”

“Uncle Joly needs a drive,” she tells him, and they promptly lose interest.

#

There’s hardly anyone at the visitation. Joly. Herself. And a woman she doesn’t know, with long white hair tied up in a pretty bun. Joly hesitates in the doorway, then makes a sharp turn towards one of the flower arrangements. He moves them around fretfully. “Oh no,” he says. “Oh, I really wanted some red ones, Iris, I know it’s bad luck but it was his favourite colour, Iris, but look at this, it’s too much.” 

It’s true — they are terribly gaudy. She doesn’t say anything and Joly stays turned away from her, carefully tucking the flowers behind one another. 

They’re in the same funeral room that they used when her father died. A different room, though. It’s dark and a little smaller than it ought to be, and strangely windowless, but not terrible, all things considered. 

The woman with the bun comes towards them. She looks familiar but Iris can’t place her. She’s wearing navy blue instead of black and she has bows all over her outfit. She’s very beautiful, the kind of person who looks like they were made for old age, all the lines of her dark face standing out start and strong. Her eyes have a startling intensity. Her walker is the artificial pink of candyfloss. “Joly,” she says. “What a beautiful visitation.”

“Oh, yes,” he says, and twists up his hands. “Oh, yes, it really is. It’s a shame no one else could make it out, but I suppose, busy lives, and of course — well, you know.” Iris doesn’t know, but the woman nods as if she does, something like a shadow passing over her face. “I was so sorry to hear about Marius. How are you doing?” 

“Oh,” she says, “I’m keeping on.” 

Joly nods, and they look at each other, and Iris realizes quite suddenly that she’s been staring. She turns away but the movement seems to shake Joly, and he straightens up almost immediately, and waves towards her. “I’m sorry, I almost forgot. Cosette, this is Iris. She’s Grantaire’s daughter. Isn’t it nice that she came all the way out here today? And this is Cosette, Iris, she’s marvellous.” 

Cosette smiles at her. “I think we’ve met before. I came to your father’s birthday party, when you were just little.” 

Iris smiles politely. “I remember that.” 

She does, too, although she doesn’t remember this woman there. She’d been about twelve years old, and there was something going on with her father that necessitated a Big Celebration on his birthday, although they’d never made a big production of it before, with a bunch of adults that she hardly knew. Joly was one of them, she knew that, and so were the people he used to live with, Musichetta and Bossuet, whose names she’d never learned to pronounce properly. She’d hidden under one of the tables with her big sister. Her father had gotten horrifically drunk and had to be convinced not to drive them home. She’d had to wear a suit that she hated. If she thinks very hard, she can almost remember this woman there, much younger and with curled hair that went on forever, her hand around the waist of a nervous man with fidgety hands, although she might just be making that up. 

It’s not a great memory, but they’re smiling as if it were, so she doesn’t argue. 

“Well,” says Cosette. “Have you seen him yet?” and Joly shakes his head. “Let’s go together, then.” 

They look towards the coffin at the back of the room. It’s made of good, clean wood. There are more red flowers around it. 

Iris follows them. 

His face looks strange and waxy. She swallows. 

She can’t help it. It’s her father that she’s thinking of, not the man lying in the coffin in front of her. She barely knows Enjolras. Not enough to grieve for him. And that doesn’t feel right to her, so she takes a step back so that Cosette and Joly can look at him on their own. 

To her left, there is a picture of Enjolras as a young man, with blond hair falling all around his face. He was at their house a lot, always a strange presence, harsh somehow. Awkward around children — once when she was very young she’d thrown her arms around him and he’d frozen, confused, before patting her on the head as if she were an excitable animal. He’d been very deaf in the later years and when he came to visit her father’s voice filled the entire house, wild with itself. 

She’d never seen him look at her mother the way he looked at Enjolras — there is a thought she doesn’t like to dwell on overmuch. It doesn’t matter now, not really. Her father never was an easy man to love. It was nice to know that someone —

Well. He’d been loved, and by more than the man in front of her. She touches one of the flowers. It feels soft, almost like fabric. The petal breaks off in her fingers, a beautiful red stain. 

“Hello,” says Joly, from behind her. He is smiling, and so is Cosette at his side. It doesn’t quite reach their eyes. “I thought we might go back to my house for coffee. You’re welcome to come, of course. But if you’ve got other things, Cosette has offered to drive me.” 

“No,” says Iris. “No, if you don’t mind, I’d like to come.” 

#

And so that is how Joly finds himself in the garden again, this time with Cosette and Iris. It has rained during the nights between and soil is falling out of his flats of flowers. He should have finished them quickly, he knows that, but there were so many of them and he’d gotten overwhelmed. “You’ve got enough to fill the Queen’s garden,” Cosette says, and Joly shakes his head. 

“Oh, don’t let him hear you say that.” 

He kneels down in the grass and moved the dirt with his hands. Cosette sits next to him, arranging her skirt very neatly around her knees. She is so pretty, her hair glimmering in the sun. Iris, dropping down with her easy bones, is as ugly as her father and as welcome. 

He hopes he dies before Cosette or else his funeral will be even emptier than Enjolras’s. Maybe not. Maybe Iris will come. That would be nice. He should have planted his flowers in the spring, they would have lived longer.

“You know something that’s terribly interesting about flowers,” he says, “is that we always think of the petals and stems as if they’re the only bit of them that’s a flower — but it’s the whole thing, really, isn’t it? The roots and so on. Maybe those more than the bits that we can see. You can pluck the flower and it will grow back, but if you dig out the roots — well. It’s something to think about.” He doesn’t know what he means by this. Cosette lays a hand on his shoulder. 

There are so many of them gone. Jehan is gone, shot at only thirty, the first of them. Feuilly was gone, coming on ten years now. Bahoral, soft in his sleep. Combeferre. Courfeyrac. Grantaire. Enjolras.

Musichetta, two years ago, a slow death, and the hospital had refused to let them in for many days of it because they weren’t married. Bossuet, not long after. Both of them gone and he was still here in his empty house, trying not to wait. He’d been very concerned about germs and disease when he was younger, but these days he finds himself with a kind of terrified ambivalence, convinced that every cold is a death rattle but not minding terribly. It isn’t a good way to live. He tries not to. He plants flowers. He writes letters to his senator. He smiles at strangers, and at Iris, who has come here so often since Grantaire’s death. 

He shuts his eyes, and then opens them, the flowers all around him, too many of them, bright as anything.


End file.
